III
[Historical Materialism]

The materialist conception of history starts from
the proposition that the production of the means to support human life
and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis
of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history,
the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes
or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how
the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of
all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's
brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but
in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought,
not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular
epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable
and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong [1],
is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have
silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic
conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the
means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light
must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the
changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented
by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the
stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern Socialism in this connection?

The present situation of society — this is now pretty generally
conceded — is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie.
The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx,
as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal
system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social
ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination
which constituted the framework of its social organization. The bourgeoisie
broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order
of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the
equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the
capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode of production
could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines
by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the
productive forces, evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie, developed
with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older
manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under
its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the
guilds, so now modern industry, in its complete development, comes into
collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production
holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the
capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces
and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man,
like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact,
objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of
the men that have brought it on. Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex,
in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds,
first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class.

Now, in what does this conflict consist?

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the
system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property
of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture
of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized
in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the
workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals,
adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small,
dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a
rule to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means
of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of
production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of
capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth
section of Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th
century this has been historically worked out through the three phases
of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie,
as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into
mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from
means of production of the individual into social means of production
only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the handloom,
the blacksmith's hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom,
the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the
co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production
itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts,
and the production from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth,
the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the joint product
of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before
they were ready. No one person could say of them: "I made that; this is
my product."

But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production
is that spontaneous division of labor which creeps in gradually and not
upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities,
whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers
to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages.
The peasant, e.g., sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought
from him the products of handicraft. Into this society of individual producers,
of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the
midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no
definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division
of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side
by side with individual production appeared social production.
The products of both were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices
at least approximately equal. But organization upon a definite plan was
stronger than spontaneous division of labor. The factories working with
the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced their
commodities far more cheaply than the individual small producers. Individual
producers succumbed in one department after another. Socialized production
revolutionized all the old methods of production. But its revolutionary
character was, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, on the
contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production
of commodities. When it arose, it found ready-made, and made liberal use
of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of commodities: merchants'
capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socialized production thus introducing
itself as a new form of the production of commodities, it was a matter
of course that under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full
swing, and were applied to its products as well.

In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities,
the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The
individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself,
and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the
labor of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate
the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His
property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labor.
Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance,
and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices
and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education,
in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of production and of
the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation
into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But
the socialized producers and means of production and their products were
still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e.,
as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the
owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product,
because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others
was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated
to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but
exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products
now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set
in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities,
but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production
itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a
form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals,
under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to
market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation,
although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests. [2]

This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production
its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social
antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode
of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing
countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant
residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized
production with capitalistic appropriation.

The first capitalists found, as we have said, alongside of other
forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made for them on the market. But it was
exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural
laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a
few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch.
The guilds were so organized that the journeyman to today became the master
of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became
socialized and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production,
as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more
worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under
the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now
became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it
now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for
a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent was
further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that
occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal
lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation
was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands
of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing
but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized
production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism
of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its
way into a society of commodity-producers, of individual producers, whose
social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based
upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers
have lost control over their own social inter-relations. Each man produces
for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and
for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No
one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor
how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product
will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs
of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized
production.

But the production of commodities, like every other form of production,
has it peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work,
despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the
only persistent form of social inter-relations — i.e., in exchange —
and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition.
They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to
be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work
themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism
to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production.
The product governs the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production
was essentially directed toward satisfying the wants of the individual.
It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer and his family.
Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, it also
helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all this there was,
therefore, no exchange; the products, consequently, did not assume the
character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything
they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the means of subsistence.
Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own
wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also
produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized exchange and
offered for sale, became commodities.

The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce
for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of
their individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land. They turned
their cattle out into the communal forest, which, also, yielded them timber
and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so forth. Production for the
purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only in its infancy.
Hence, exchange was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of production
stable; there was local exclusiveness without, local unity within; the
mark in the country; in the town, the guild.

But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially
with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of
commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and
with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits
broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent,
isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production
of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy;
and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means
by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy
of socialized production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the
increasing organization of production, upon a social basis, in every individual
productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition
of things was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced
into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by
its side. The field of labor became a battle-ground. The great geographical
discoveries, and the colonization following them, multiplied markets and
quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did
not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities.
The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts, the commercial
wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made
the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence.
Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide
the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of
whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside.
It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred
from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence
natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The
contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation
now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production
in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.

The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of
the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to
get out of that "vicious circle" which Fourier had already discovered.
What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is
gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral,
and must come to an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with
the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of
society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority
of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again
who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling
force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility
of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every
individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more,
under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous.
If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of
millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means
the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It
means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage
workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete
industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845 [3],
available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be
cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead
weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence
with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that
suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful
weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments
of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the
laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument
for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes
at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power,
and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions;
that machinery,

"the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the
most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and
that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of
expanding the value of his capital." (Capital, English edition,
p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary
condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts
after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the
masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys
its own home market.

"The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population,
or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this
law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan
did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding
with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is,
therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery,
ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on
the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital
(Marx's Capital, p. 661)

And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalist mode
of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not
to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive,
hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the
battery.

We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery
is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that
forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery,
always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending
the field of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory
law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which
that of gases is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity
for expansion, both qualitative and quantative, that laughs at all resistance.
Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for
the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive
and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different
laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot
keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable,
and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break
in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic.
Capitalist production has begotten another "vicious circle".

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis
broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange
among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on,
are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still,
the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they
are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed,
the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because
they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows
upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years;
productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until
the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated
in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again.
Little by little, the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial
trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop
of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation,
which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch
of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825,
gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877), we are
going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises
is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described
the first "crise plethorique", a crisis from plethora.

In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production
and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation
of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation,
becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation
of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached
its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode
of exchange.

The fact that the socialized organization of production within
the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the
anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates
it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration
of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and
a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the
capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive
forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of
means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason
the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production,
means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production
and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes
the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing
that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence
into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can
only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into
capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity
of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence
stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the
coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone
forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live.
On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands
convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces.
On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy,
press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition
of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character
as social production forces.

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and
more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger
command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital
class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so
far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial
high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the
crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends
to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means
of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock
companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from
the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other
forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this
form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular
branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a "Trust", a union
for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount
to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling
price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes
bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel
a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of a particular industry
is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition gives
place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in
1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion
of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single
plan, and with a capital of 6,000,000 pounds.

In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite
— into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic
society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading
socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and
advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so
palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production
conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community
by a small band of dividend-mongers.

In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative
of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake
the direction of production. [4]
This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the
great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office,
the telegraphs, the railways.

If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for
managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the
great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies,
trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for
that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further
social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons,
and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil
one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production
forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces
them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population,
although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and
trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic
nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts,
this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization
that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions
of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well
of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter
what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the
capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The
more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does
it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit.
The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation
is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to
a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not
the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical
conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of
the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in
the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production.
And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession
of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of
society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and
of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts
all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly,
forcibly, destructively. But,with the taking over by society of the productive
forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products
will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature,
and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will
become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly,
forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with,
them. But, when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action,
their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject
them more and more to our own will, and, by means of them, to reach our
own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces
of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and
the character of these social means of action — and this understanding
goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production, and its defenders
— so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us,
so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail.

But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hand
working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants.
The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity
in the lightning in the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph
and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working
in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature
of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives
place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according
to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist
mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer,
and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of
the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production;
upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance
and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation,
as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely
transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates
the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish
this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation
of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property,
it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat
seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes
all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as
State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the
State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro
tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing
any interference from without with the existing conditions of production,
and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited
classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode
of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official
representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into
a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State
of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as
a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens;
in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;
in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society,
it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social
class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual
struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with
the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more
remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no
longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes
itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession
of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same
time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social
relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies
out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration
of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is
not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value
of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by
agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of
the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State
out of hand.

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production,
the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been
dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects,
as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become
a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization
were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not
by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction
to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these
classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation
of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed
class, was the necessary consequences of the deficient and restricted development
of production in former times. So long as the total social labor only yields
a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence
of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time
of the great majority of the members of society — so long, of necessity,
this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority,
exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive
labor, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction
of labor, State business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the
law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes.
But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried
out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. it does not prevent
the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power
at the expense of the working-class, from turning its social leadership
into an intensified exploitation of the masses.

But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain
historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under
given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production.
It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive
forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a
degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this
or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore,
the existence of class distinction itself, has become a obsolete anachronism.
It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to
a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products,
and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and
of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become
not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance
to development.

This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy
is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic
bankruptcy recurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, society is
suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products,
which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face-to-face with the absurd
contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers
are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production burst the bonds
that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance
from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly-accelerated
development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited
increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialized appropriation
of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial
restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation
of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable
concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises.
Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production
and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling
classes of today, and their political representatives. The possibility
of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production,
an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day
more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and
exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is
now, for the first time, here, but it is here. [5]

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production
of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the
product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by
systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence
disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally
marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal
conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the
conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man,
now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time
becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master
of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto
standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating
him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him.
Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity
imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action.
The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass
under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself,
more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time
will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in
a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent
of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.

I. Mediaeval Society — Individual production on a small scale.
Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly,
petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either
of the producer himself or his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production
over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into
exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But
already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production
of society at large.

II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first
be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means
of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence,
their transformation from individual to social means of production — a
transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange.
The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears.
In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates
the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social
act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts,
the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual
capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions
in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings
to light.

A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation
of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie.

B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws
governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction
between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy
in the production as a whole.

C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition
compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly
growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other
hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition,
for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive
forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess
there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence.
But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable
to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the
productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless
they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents.
The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises
in rebellion against the form of exchange.

D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive
forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great
institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies,
later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to
be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried
employees.

III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions.
The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms
the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie,
into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production
from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their
socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production
upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development
of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth
an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes,
the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master
of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord
over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical
mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical
conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed
proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning
of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task
of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.

Notes

2.
It is hardly necessary in this connection to point out that, even if the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is just as much revolutionized as production is by the changes described above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I appropriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note in passing that wage-labor, which contains the whole capitalist mode of production in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form, it existed for centuries alongside slave-labor. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary historical pre-conditions had been furnished.

3.
"The Conditions of the Working-Class in England" — Sonnenschein & Co., p.84.

4.
I say "have to". For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has become economically inevitable, only then — even if it is the State of today that effects this — is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.

If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

5.
A few figures may serve to give an approximate idea of the enormous expansive force of the modern means of production, even under capitalist pressure. According to Mr. Giffen, the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbers in

As an instance of the squandering of means of production and of products during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone, in the crisis of 1873-78, was given at the second German Industrial Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878), as 22,750,000 pounds.